It is said by the faithful that God has the right to do whatever he pleases to humans because he created them. I disagree. Let's explore that idea:
If you create a true artificial intelligence, are you morally justified in doing whatever you want to that creation? Can you hurt them if you want?
Imagine a hypothetical AI being of the kind we see in science fiction; truly real persons that are artificially created. Is it a moral action for you to cause that being to suffer if they do not meet your standards? Are you morally right to do that? They are utterly your creation, they do not exist without your act of creation. Does that mean you can torture them or abuse them or subjugate them and still be morally justified?
That is the argument that theists use for god having the right to inflict suffering on humanity. Is it still a satisfying argument when we remove the conceits we allow for god?
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This was a recurring theme in the TV series Black Mirror. Several episodes involved the transfer of someone's intelligence into digital form, and torturing them. In one, a man is kept forever in the state of agony he was in at the moment of his execution, with copies sold as keychain ornaments.
In one Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, someone wants to take Data apart to figure out how he works. There is a lengthy discussion over whether he is a "person" for whom doing this would be unacceptable, or just a machine that can be destroyed to satisfy someone's curiosity.
Nobody would say that the Mona Lisa painting is a "person," but demolishing it to better understand Leonardo's painting technique would be problematic for most people.
